DIRECTED STUDY, CAPSTONE COMPLETION PROJECT

AND

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Proposal Guidelines

A.Title Page

1. Include a brief description of the directed or independent study project.

BRationale

The following points should be considered (#'s 1 and 2 are applicable to HRD 698 only):

  1. How does the sponsoring organization see the role of this project? How does it fit into its mission?

2. What evidence do you have that the organization welcomes and will support this undertaking?

3. What is your purpose with this project? How will it help you advance knowledge and/or skills?

4. Why is this project worthy of your time?

C.Learning Goals

This gives you an opportunity to build upon items #3 and #4 in Section B. From the point of view of the USM program faculty, this is the most important section of this proposal.

1. What specifically do you hope to learn from this directed study/independent study experience? New knowledge? New skills?

2. How will this expected learning build upon previous work you've done in the graduate program?

3. From what you know, is there any divergence in the learning goals you've proposed and the goals of the study as perceived by the sponsoring agency (in the case of a directed study)? An example of this would be a student who is primarily interested in learning the process of grant writing, and the agency being inordinately concerned about the actual successful funding of this grant.

D.Design of the Project

In this section of the proposal, the student details what she/he is going to do. An outline of specific activities and products is appropriate. List each of the milestone products (i.e., a literature search resulting in an annotated bibliography; a first draft of a workshop; the recruitment of a research sample) in the project. Provide a chart or some other time-line denoting the sequence and scheduling of key events/activities/product deadlines.

  1. Evaluation

This is the section of your written proposal which indicates how you expect your work products(s) to be evaluated. You will want to address the following questions:

  1. Who will be involved in the project evaluation?
  2. How will these individuals, including the faculty supervisor, be kept informed of project progress, problems, and issues?
  3. What role do you want the faculty to have throughout the course of conducting this directed/independent study?

4.When will the final course product be made available and to whom?

5. What sort of input is desired in relation to milestone products (on the way toward completing the final course product)?

  1. Role of Faculty Instructor and Field/Site Supervisor

Please describe the general role for faculty instructor of HRD 698 or HRD 699, as well as the role of the site supervisor in the field.

Note: While working on a directed study or independent study, students are part of a Support Seminar that meets 5 times during the semester. Expectations for this seminar include short reflection papers, as well as a final presentation and learning synthesis paper.

Revised June 2010